


Feel Not the Sting of Unwelcome

by Morgyn Leri (morgynleri)



Series: Lies, Misdirection, and Terrible Truth [25]
Category: Mythology - Fandom, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: GFY, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-17
Updated: 2012-11-17
Packaged: 2017-11-18 21:17:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/565404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morgynleri/pseuds/Morgyn%20Leri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Here, she would be safe. Here, she would not worry for the distrust and the disdain of the Aesir court. Here, she would be loved, and called daughter, and above all, kept safe. Yet he cannot bring himself to step away, his fingers still stroking back hair as black as his own from a jotunn-blue face.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Feel Not the Sting of Unwelcome

_Her hand is cool on his shoulder, gentle for a moment before she pulls away, stepping delicately around the fire to settle where Anat often sat. Red eyes watch him for a long moment before a smile blooms across her face, warm summer sky instead of deep ice. He didn't expect she'd come, but he should have known she would not stay away._

Here, she would be safe. Here, she would not worry for the distrust and the disdain of the Aesir court. Here, she would be loved, and called daughter, and above all, kept safe. Yet he cannot bring himself to step away, his fingers still stroking back hair as black as his own from a jotunn-blue face.

"She will be as a daughter to him." Anat's hand is warm on his shoulder, her voice quiet as not to wake Hel. "It is a boon he will not forget, that he is given such a trust."

"So long as he keeps her safe." From who and what, he doesn't need to mention, for they both know too well who is the greatest danger.

_She greets Coulson and Barton with the easy grace of the princess she has always been treated as, has always known she is. The trust of one who has grown up loved and accepted, and has not learned that family only brings pain. For that, he is glad, though he wishes she had not taken as mentor the one she had._

"Why?" The court here is black stone and bleached bone, different from the wheat gold and summer blue of the court of the one he'd trusted with his daughter. As different as night to day, death to life.

Mot shrugs, never moving from his throne of death. "I have not had an apprentice to learn from me the magics. She asked it of me, and called upon the favor which I owe the sister-wife of her guardian-father."

From the rule over the dead, he had thought to keep her, that in bringing her here she would escape the cruel fate Odin would decree for the fault of her existence. Yet still she will find the dead, though perhaps it is better she learns this from one who will not see her as merely a tool to be used, but one who might truly be a queen.

_When Anat returns, Hel greets her with a happy smile and abandons the pretense of dignity, once again the girl who had taken to one who had not borne her as if she were her mother. Here, she sheds the role which she has taken up, no longer the remote queen who rules the dark realm of the dead, but the laughing princess who lives in sunlight. He cannot be happy she has fallen yet to the decree of the All-Father, but that she does not feel the sting of it, that he can be happy for._


End file.
